In the new horror movie “Opus,” we are introduced to Alfred Moretti, the biggest pop star of the ‘90s, with 38 No. 1 hits and albums as big as “Thriller,” “Hotel California” and “Nebraska.” If the name Alfred Moretti sounds more like a personal injury attorney from New Jersey, that’s the first sign “Opus” is going to stumble.
John Malkovich leans into his regular off-kilter creepy to play the unlikely pop star at the center of this serious misfire by the A24 studio, a movie that also manages to pull “The Bear” star Ayo Edebiri back to earth. How both could be totally miscast will haunt your dreams.
Writer-director Mark Anthony Green has created a pretty good premise: A massive pop star who went quiet for the better part of three decades reemerges with a new album — his 18th studio LP, called “Caesar’s Request” — and invites a select six people to come to his remote Western compound for an album listening weekend. It’s like a golden ticket.
Edebiri’s Ariel is a one of those invited. She’s 27, a writer for a hip music magazine who has been treading water for three years. She’s ambitious but has no edge. “Your problem is you’re middle,” she’s told. Unfortunately, her magazine boss is also invited, which means she’s just a note-taker. Edebiri’s self-conscious, understated humor is wasted here.
It takes Ariel and the rest of the guests — an influencer, a paparazzo, a former journalist-nemesis and a TV personality played by Juliette Lewis, once again cast as the frisky sexpot — way too much time to realize that Moretti has created a cult in the desert. And they’re murderous. This is Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous” crossed with Mark Mylod’s “The Menu.”
It’s always a mistake to get too close a look at the monster in a horror movie and Green makes the same error with his pop star, ludicrously nicknamed “The Wizard of Wiggle.” Watching Malkovich, in his 70s, make vulgar pelvic thrusts at his visitors while wearing a weird metallic top really doesn’t inspire dread. It inspires cringe and an AARP membership.
Costume designer Shirley Kurata has clearly lost the thread, putting Malkovich in Nehru jackets embellished with sprays of crystals, a sarong, gloves with rings on top and platform shoes. He looks less like a superstar than a sommelier at a stuffy molecular gastronomy restaurant: “This cabernet has notes of chocolate and leather.”
Most egregious is that the music doesn’t match the expectations. Hitmakers Nile Rodgers and The-Dream wrote several Moretti songs for the film and they’re laughably bad Eurotrash pop. The movie opens with slo-mo images of fans rocking out rapturously to Moretti and yet no viewer will want to hear these songs again. They’re very middle.
Part of the problem is it’s not clear what kind of artist he is — a guitar hero? A dance savant? A Lady Gaga-like explorer? Fascinatingly, TV on the Radio’s 2008 song “DLZ” is heard over the final credits, nothing original. If you don’t have the goods, why even make this film?
As if you didn’t already know, not everyone will leave this remote New Mexican compound, where the guests are under constant surveillance, cellphones and laptops have been confiscated, and workers have curious scars. “This whole thing is a trip,” one says. It gets weirder: Moretti insists all pubic hair be removed. And there’s something with oysters.
Green wobbles as he tries to land this plane and what had been an intriguing premise to talk about fame and the parasitic industries that live off it turns into a gross-out, run-for-it bloodfest and a plot that unravels. It becomes what it intended to satirize — a pop spectacle.
“Opus,” an A24 release in theaters Friday, is rated R for “violent content including a grisly image, language, sexual material and brief graphic nudity.” Running time: 103 minutes. One star out of four.
